Stability, Safety, and Happiness
by Lavinia Lavender
Summary: It was the insensible force of adolescent attraction, but it was strong and consuming and had carried them on for how many months now?


**Author notes:** Written for a fic challenge; I like it more than the first one I did. It's an odd way to handle my OTP, but I (for once) am being realistic, and I think it has its bitter justice in the end. My prompts were "wished I hadn't said something."

* * *

Lily was crying in an empty classroom.

Remus stood at the doorway, more in than out, as both a watch and a potential comforter. He wasn't the latter yet, though. Now he only stood in the doorway, eyes on the hallway ahead, because he could hardly even bear to _hear_ her crying.

It wasn't uncontrolled, it wasn't loud. She wasn't bawling, but they were hard sobs, bitter and deep and unending. They were full of the consciousness of her own part to blame, the hopelessness of the situation, and the pain.

Lily wasn't a crier. Remus had seen her toughen quickly from their first year, with the rising anti-Muggle sentiment. She was a tough girl anyway – he admired her for being capable of everything he was not, how she did it with such ease – how independent she could be of even her closest friends. Over the years, he had only seen the bright shine of tears in her eyes on a few occasions, a wetness quickly dashed away.

But she cried like this now, knowing he was there, and maybe it was arrogance or bullshit, but he felt it wouldn't be this awful if there were anyone else in this school she could cry to.

He knew the cause. He knew it as certainly as he knew vaguely the details around it. He hadn't been supposed to know, anyway. But – clearly, something that could make her cry like this – it wasn't something she could easily contain to herself, not even for Lily. It was so much and Remus didn't understand it, didn't understand why (_when she's so clever_) – but here she was now. And Remus had experience with friends who clung on to things which seemed completely illogical and hurtful.

But, for whatever reason, he was inclined to give Lily more benefit of the doubt than he gave his other friends. Even if the culprit was Severus Snape.

It wasn't that Remus didn't think there was any good or positive at all in the Slytherin, that he didn't have the potential…or did at one time. But this, this – this was what Remus had known would happen. By this point.

Lily was clever in many ways. She was not self-destructive or masochistic, and Remus felt at times like these that one of the greatest mysteries in his life was why Lily Evans had a relationship with Severus Snape.

He saw the first clues because it appeared he was alone in his year for having the gift of _observation_. Still, it was nothing definite – glances (a whole lot of those), odd statements, and the most obvious at all: a lack of animosity, on Snape's part, toward the girl James had, without any attempt at disguise for the world, set his heart on.

It was enough to make him cautiously mention Snape to her, in a very neutral way – he was only trying to gauge for exactly what was going on, and the metaphorical jump in her reaction was about a hundred times stronger than anything he had expected. The conversation that followed had been a very strange one; she was desperate, desperate that he promise not to tell anyone, to help hide it. He had asked _why_ the best way he could, and in all her words that followed, all Remus understood was that she did not know herself. It was the insensible force of adolescent attraction, but it was strong and consuming and had carried them on for how many months now?

Remus had seen her in odd, brief moments before, when she got back from meeting Snape; when she was wildly giddy, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen and her cheeks either pale or flushed. She had been unable to stop moving, whirling around and talking of such outlandish things, and overall acting so un-Lily-like that Remus had finally asked if there was a misunderstanding, and Severus Snape was actually a code name for an illicit drug. Lily had laughed and laughed in a way that wasn't entirely reassuring.

Other times she returned upset – not crying, but obviously intensely distraught. Lily was never so edgy and disoriented, forgetting Charms Club and prefect meetings – that caught everyone's attention. There were a lot more of those unhappy returns lately.

Both extremes unnerved Remus, but he knew Lily was clever, and the only thing he felt able to say was _be careful, Lily_.

And now it had come to this empty classroom anyway.

Remus wondered if she would go back to him.

He wondered if it was finally time for him to say something stronger.

Lily sounded like she was emptying herself out; there were mainly just gasps now, at longer and longer intervals.

No one was coming down this corridor. Remus stepped further inside and closed the door gently before walking over to the table where Lily was sitting, her face still in her hands. He pulled a chair around to face her and sat down.

Lily took a deep breath and dropped one of her hands, the other still pressing to her forehead, half-shielding her eyes. She was so pretty, Remus caught himself thinking – which was very strange because her face was very blotchy and swollen from crying her eyes out and one would have trouble finding a definition of pretty to fit it under. But _normally_ she was so pretty, that's what he meant, and it was sad to see her so transformed now. Remus couldn't like it; he couldn't believe anything was worth this.

He reached over and lightly laid his hand over hers. Lily swallowed, not looking up.

It took him several moments to find the words he wanted. "Lily…is this still what you want?" He paused a moment, but she gave no immediate answer. "I know, it means something to you – it means a _lot_ to you – but you seem so unhappy lately."

Her eyes pressed shut again, mouth screwed up against more grief, and Remus had to remind himself he wasn't the cause of this. He squeezed her hand.

"I know you, Lily – you hate giving things up, you won't, not when there's a single reason to keep going. But Lily –" _This is damaging you,_ he wanted to say, but didn't know if he could; it seemed too harsh.

She was taking a deep, unsteady breath now, and he wished he could offer her something to drink, to help her throat.

"We – I was happy, Remus, like I've never been…" Her voice was indeed rough, and also sounded weak, trembly. Remus suddenly thought there could be a real chance she might not go back to him.

"I know," he answered softly now. "I know you were, I could tell. But – you know, Lily, not everything's meant to last forever. Very few things can, in fact. And you _were_ happy, it was a good thing. But what is it now?"

She lifted her hand out from under Remus', to raise and let it fall in a loose fist on the table. "If we could just – get out of Hogwarts –"

Remus didn't say anything. This was all up to Lily now; she wasn't a silly girl, she knew the facts, the chance the two of them would really leave school for this. And what that would cause, how much attention it would attract, and what they might suffer as consequence.

Lily closed her eyes again.

Remus laid his hand back on her arm, trying to find his next words. "What is this now, Lily? You know more than I do – what do you think is going to happen? Is there any chance –"

Lily started crying again, almost silently this time. Remus felt more wretched than he had in a long while. He squeezed her arm desperately.

"Lily, please, I don't want to see you hurt. That's all I want, you know."

"I know," she choked out, leaning forward to him, bowing her head so her hair fell forward. Remus quickly got up, moving around the table to kneel next to her chair, and she set her head against his shoulder. He held her awkwardly, wondering if he should say anything else, if it would be too much.

Finally, he whispered, "Do what's best for both of you. Him too."

Lily was happy with James. She loved him, no one needed the gift of _observation_ to tell that. The night he proposed to her was a long and happy one, with so much firewhiskey and butterbeer he would always tie the smell of those two together to that night. Lily never picked up a firewhiskey bottle, but enough of it found its way in her glasses that she ended up drunker than Remus had ever seen her: laughing, her hair brushing the ground as she bent over backwards, James swinging her.

She was very happy, but she was never as disconcertingly giddy as those unmentionable occasions in school, when she had a drug named Severus Snape. There were no more of any of those extremes, even at her happiest that night, or when she was angry with James for nearly killing himself on Sirius' motorcycle. She was quite stable, her emotions were safe with James, and she was as happy as could be with the situation the world was in.

They all knew by now Severus Snape was a Death Eater. Lily never talked about it or him at all. Remus fervently prayed that she didn't have the same thought as him: that if anything could have prevented it, it would have been her. Lily didn't see herself as so cataclysmic; Remus wondered if, and rather hoped at times he was the only one who did.

Remus had many terrible thoughts the year after Lily and James died, he thought Peter dead as well, and Sirius locked in Azkaban, responsible for it all. The second year's thoughts were of a slightly less precarious nature, but nevertheless even worse in a way, because there was more sense in them. It was then that he remembered his conversation with Lily in that empty classroom, and Severus Snape currently quietly teaching at Hogwarts under Dumbledore. This thought could hardly compete with all the others he had, but even so, it found a new angle of torment when he wondered if it could have worked at all, if it could have changed things – wizarding world be damned, if _she_ could have been alive today.


End file.
